January 18, 2015: If you visited this page
in the past few days, you noticed I left it empty for a day or so. I have been
expanding my page about Jerrie Mock which is now FOUR pages. Her
pages are in a separate section similar to what I did for the Alaska
trip.

The other news of the day is the flight I made down to Sebring, Florida for the
Light Sport Expo. The flight path below shows how I cut across a path north of the
restricted area that covers the Avon Park Bombing range. On the way home, I flew
around the south end of the military shooting area, then East across the airport at
Okeechobee, Florida before turning for home base. You can see we were near the
middle of the Florida peninsula.

This map section shows the arrival and departure at Sebring Airport. I
was up at about 3,000 feet MSL flying over the area where the planes were setting up for
arrival down at 1,100 feet MSL. The land here is about 100 feet above sea level,
which is the pattern altitude for the airport and is established at Lake Jackson before
heading East to the airports a seen below. I made the descent from 3,000 feet to
1,100 feet while going north from Lake Jackson and around Lake Sebring.

The trade show at the airport is for Light Sport aircraft. The usual
avionics vendors were present, but all the airplanes are light weight to meet the rules.
This is the Cessna Sky Catcher. Most all these aircraft use a Rotax engine.

Here is a two-seat auto-gyro that meets the speed and weight requirements for
the light sport category.

Van's Aircraft brought this RV-12 from the Oregon factory to Florida.
They had hoped to have a second RV-12 from a customer here, but bad weather in the East
kept that airplane from getting into Florida.

Here is the view from the front.

Here is the sign out front of the RV-12. The wings and fuselage are
aluminum like my RV-9A.

The instrument panel is made from carbon fiber. I did not notice my
friend Bill Blackwood was in the picture holding my RED CUP until I downloaded the photo
to the computer.

When we departed, the route was south then east to pass by the Okeechobee
Airport (KOBE). I took this photo as we were approaching. I had Bill flying
while I was taking photos. He is a 200-hour pilot working on his IFR ticket.

The airplane is in a slow climb heading up to 7,500 feet MSL to get into smooth
air above the clouds. We had a tailwind coming south and now we have tailwinds as we
head for home. I should not have had the polarizing filter on the camera. The
Dynon D-10A does not show up well through the filter.

The GPS reports a ground speed of 140 MPH as a result of the tail wind.
The prop is just under 2,300 RPM, but the throttle setting is not full during the easy
"cruise" climb that only burns 6 gallons per hour.

The view on my side shows the clouds below near the airport. Check the
cloud shadows on the ground. This is another of those W.W.II airports.

Here is the GPS ground track of the flight path near Okeechobee. The
bottom of the map shows the upper portion of Lake Okeechobee. That canal at the
lower left of the map is the end of a waterway that connects from Kissimmee to Lake
Okeechobee. There is a canal on the west side of the lake that goes over to Fort
Myers and the Gulf of Mexico. Another canal on the east side of the lake goes to
Stuart, Florida and the Atlantic Ocean. The locks on those waterways limit the size
of the boats.

As always, here is the "Enterprise" back in the hangar with Bill
Blackwood posing after his first ride in a Van's Aircraft with that "RV grin" on
his face. He has been a reader of this web site for a number of years. He
first contacted me during the Christmas holiday period. The flight today added 1.9
hours to the Hobb's meter.